Friends Who Are Going

Friends Attending

Friends Attending

Friends Attending

Description

Nuclear material is hazardous to living beings at all stages of the nuclear supply chain, from uranium mining to accidental reactor leaks, criticality incidents, spent nuclear fuel, and the use of nuclear weapons. Places where uranium is mined, processed and stored will remain hazardous to living beings for thousands of years. Future generations will need to be warned about their dangerous contents. There is no universal language. Symbols change their meanings over time. The oral tradition of storytelling is the longest surviving archive there is.

Using the framework of playful composition in the vein of the surrealist game of “Consequences”, Kerri Meehan and Alex Ressel invite workshop participants to make a collaborative film. Consequences is a tool to disrupt everyday logic through unpredictability and chance. During the workshop, participants will use this strategy to channel imaginary worlds, test boundaries, and listen to their intuition. Groups will work together to make a film or sound work. A story for the future.

The workshop will explore storytelling as a form of enquiry: encouraging active engagement with concepts of nuclearity and nature, guardianship, and post-humanist thought.

This event is part of the Arts Catalyst season Real Lives Half Lives: Fukushima, which includes two exhibitions and a season of events exploring cultural and societal responses to disaster, displacement and poisoned lands.

Workshop Leaders

Kerri Meehan and Alex Ressel’s practice is broadly concerned with time, technology and communication. Kerri and Alex began working together in 2012 on Superlative TV, a pirate television station they co-founded which broadcast in the frequencies left fallow following the digital switchover. They invited artists to screen work and made their own programming for the station. They continue to work collaboratively. Their practice is broadly concerned with time, production, materiality and communication. More recently, they created a time capsule with global online communities, the first video intentionally transmitted into deep space and a project about chimeras in museums which explores the relationship between myth and science. Alongside their practice they run public events, reading groups and workshops.

Alex and Kerri are presently working on a project about nuclear culture and storytelling. In order for future generations to be warned of the dangers, living stories that last as long must be told. Jawoyn paintings of people with signs of radiation poisoning and dreamtime stories that have been passed on for more than 20,000 years continue to warn against digging in “sickness county”, a part of the land with radioactive minerals. They will be visiting contended areas in Australia where uranium is mined and nuclear waste is stored. Alex and Kerri will run workshops in Australia and UK to collaboratively create stories and images that could communicate with future generations about the environment.